More than a third of Arizona high schoolers were chronically absent during 2023-2024 school year

More than 30% of Arizona high school students were chronically absent during the 2023-24 school year. That means they missed at least a tenth of the school year. That percentage is lower than it was a couple of years ago, but still higher than pre-pandemic levels.

The findings from Helios Education Foundation also find discrepancies between which students are missing school and which aren’t. Schools in lower-income areas, for example, have more students that are chronically absent. English-language learner students, Native American students, Black and Hispanic students also have higher rates of chronic absenteeism.

Paul Perrault is senior vice president of Community Impact and Learning at Helios Education Foundation. he joins The Show to talk more about this report.

Helios Education Foundation

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: And Paul, let's start with what stands out to you about the report.

PAUL PERRAULT: What really stands out is that, you know, you start looking at high school students from grade 9 to 12 and that they're missing more school than any group of students along the continuum. We really saw that around '21, '22, that the percentage of students that were chronically absent, meaning missing 18 or more days of school in high school in Arizona was about 42%. That was up from 24% before the pandemic.

And the last year that the data was brought out in '20 or released in '23, '24, it's down to 34%. You know, still basically one in every three students is missing more than 18 days of school in Arizona high school. And that's just really challenging as we think about them being ready for workforce, them being ready for college, having opportunities after high school. Those are the big things that stand out to us.

BRODIE: Do we have a sense of why they're missing so much school? 

PERRAULT; You know, we continue to work with schools and districts and other partners to think about the reasons why. And what we've learned along the way is there's a number of reasons. Number one, we saw that people got used to, and students as well, got used to not being in school during the pandemic. And we saw chronic absence rates really start spiking at that time and after, and they've stayed high.

And so kids got used to being able to go to school when they wanted to and not having to be there all the time. We're running into more and more transportation issues. And I think you'll see, we can see stories all the time about different districts in Arizona, for example, canceling bus service. So transportation issues, how do you get your students to school?

Mental health is still a big issue after the pandemic as well. And so if kids don't want to go to school or if there's other issues that they're having mental health issues, you start adding all those factors up, the mental health, the transportation. And lastly, some students we learned really have to help support their family, whether they're younger siblings working themselves to help support the family. Those are a number of reasons that kids are just not in school all the time, especially in high school.

BRODIE: Is it safe to say that some of those factors might be easier for schools and districts to address than others?

PERRAULT: Definitely. I mean, when you start thinking about issues like, you know, transportation or getting kids just used to being back in the school, there are definitely interventions and support practices to get students back to school on those areas, to make them understand that school is the most important place for them to be during the day. There are other issues, like I mentioned, the mental health, sometimes that does take more outside supports. And that's why we really stress that.

Chronic absenteeism is not just a school issue. It's a community issue. And how do we make sure that we're supporting our students, supporting our families, you know, if they need ... daycare support, if they need mental health support, if they need transportation support. So definitely there are some issues that the schools can work on a little bit easier. And then there's definitely issues that they're going to have to work out and reach for the community.

BRODIE: It seems as though there's pretty broad agreement that chronic absenteeism is a problem that needs to be addressed in Arizona. I wonder, from your perspective, is there agreement on solutions? Is there agreement on what to actually do to try to bring the number of kids who are chronically absent down? 

PERRAULT: There definitely is agreement in certain areas, and I'll talk about a couple of the areas that Helios has worked with partners around the community. Number one is just being more using data to drive your discussions and your decisions. So, we've partnered with United Way Valley of the Sun. to really help understand and help train teachers in school districts to use data to understand who's missing school, help identify interventions that will support them.

We've partnered with Read On Arizona, and they've really done a great job of identifying interventions and supports that schools can put in place and really make that a kind of a community kind of decision. We've talked to other groups and we looked at research about what's working. And what we really see that's working and that people can agree upon, is that those kind of incentives to bring students back into school that are not punitive. So how do you have the family support, the community support, talking to students, having those relationships. Those are what the research really show are improving chronic absenteeism rates. And that's where we have agreement around how we can support those students.

BRODIE: One of the other ideas that has been brought up is essentially keeping kids back, holding students back if they if they miss too much school. I'm wondering if you think that would be an effective strategy? 

PERRAULT: Well, the strategy when you when you start being punitive really kind of misses the idea of root causes. And we talked a little bit earlier about mental health, transportation. Punitive nature isn't always gonna get to those root causes, and we wanna solve the root cause. So we really wanna focus on those strategies that we can actually get to the root cause, solve 'em, like transportation, mental health, day care. That way we're gonna see students get back to school.

BRODIE: Do you think that it is realistic to think that the numbers will get back to pre-pandemic levels? 

PERRAULT: We think it can be realistic. We've seen some really positive outcomes with some of our partner schools and districts who have put in intervention supports. really made chronic absenteeism a focus. And so we have no doubt that with the work and with it being a community effort that we can see an increase in or a reduction in the chronic absenteeism and an increase in students actually graduating, having the ability to go to college ready for the workforce.

BRODIE: Well, and it also seems as though some of the solutions that you've talked about are easier to do in a timely manner. Like when you talk about trying to figure out transportation, I'm not saying it's an easy thing to solve, but like there are options out there to get students to school that you can do fairly quickly. When you talk about, you know, sort of changing the culture and reminding students that being at school is the most important place and it's not great just to sit at home in your pajamas or just say, I don't feel like going today. I'm going to skip today. That seems like maybe a harder thing, a longer term kind of proposition to pull off. 

PERRAULT: Definitely, Mark. And that's why our recommendations really start with some of those focused ones, early high school intervention. So how do we implement freshman year support such as mentoring and personalized attendance monitoring to prevent early disengagement? Making sure that we integrate attendance data, using that attendance data with interventions to really target and support students. having that culture that you just talked about is so important.

So, you know, moving away from compliance to celebrating strong attendance, those are ways that we can do things quickly and easily that you're going to see some positive impacts really quickly.

BRODIE: Do you find that the factors and the issues that you need to address in high school are the same as the issues that students in elementary school or middle school are dealing with, or is this a whole different situation for high school? 

PERRAULT: It's a different, very different situation, and as a father of a high school student right now too, I see some of those issues where it can be easy for your student to think that they, I don't need to go to school, I can catch up online. High school students typically have different teachers, and so even tracking attendance gets more difficult in high school as students have different teachers, they go from one class to another, sometimes students come in late, sometimes they leave early, and as students who are older, they're more mobile. I can leave school. I might be driving at the time I'm 16. And so the issues that are in high school, they're going to get much more pronounced because those students are going to have an opportunity to decide if they want to go to school more often than not.